Mixing location question

[UstadKhanAli]

Of course, but often that's all someone has to work with! So then what, tell them to just give up and go work at McDonald's? --Ethan

No...please no!!!

Obviously I agree since I'm working in one of these rooms and am still able to record/mix good music. But since the OP was asking about whether to move from his 10x10 room to a generally far more ideal 50x60 room, we were responding to that.

[MrJoshua]

Since this thread is still active, and Ethan has already posted in it and all, I figure this is a good place to ask a question about the design for the inside of the new building after it goes up. Keep in mind it may be spring before I build this, so things could change between now and then.

The building will be 24x24' with a ceiling that is 12' at the edge and peaks at 16' for an average height of 14'. Obviously, a square building isn't acoustically ideal, so my original plan was to divide it into four rooms - one 15'x24' tracking room, one 9'x12' control room, and two 9'x6' storage/iso rooms. But the more I think about it, the more it seems kind of silly to put in a 9'x12' control room. That leaves me with just about the same square footage (albeit with a much higher ceiling) as my current control/mixing room, and while it isn't square, it still isn't ideal. So now I'm thinking of leaving the control room connected to the tracking room.

What I'm thinking of doing is making the two 6'9' storage rooms be in two of the corners of the building, with the "control room" area between them. I'm thinking of making the walls for those rooms be framed up, insulated, and then instead of putting sheetrock on the walls I thought I might cover them with fabric and then a wood latticework. I think that would have the effect of basically making two 6'x9' rectangular bass traps in the corners, while still reflecting some highs off the wood lattice. Or I could leave off the wood (although that would make for a pretty easily-damaged wall surface) and just have fabric-covered insulation inside the wood-framed walls.

Alternately, I could just leave the whole interior as one big room and frame up a wall about 4-5' across each corner, and either hinge them so I could get behind them for storage or just put shelves on the walls for storing things (I have a lot of spare drum kit parts, random hardware, spare tubes, etc that need to be put somewhere that I don't have to worry about hearing them rattle during a take or something). Just put some big bass traps in the corners, in other words, and then just keep the interior as one big room for general purpose use as my tracking, control room, and mixing environment.

I'm sort of just tossing ideas out. The 24'x24' measurement is pretty much as big as I can afford to go at this point, so that's set in stone. How I divide up the interior, if I divide it at all, is very much up in the air.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Ethan Winer]

The 24'x24' measurement is pretty much as big as I can afford to go at this point, so that's set in stone. How I divide up the interior, if I divide it at all, is very much up in the air.

 

I would not make a bunch of tiny rooms! Is this studio for your own personal use? If so, I'd make one large control room and a medium size booth that's mostly dead. You can record most stuff in the control room.

 

Play around with my ModeCalc program to find favorable dimensions:

 

Graphical Mode Calculator

 

--Ethan

[MrJoshua]

I would not make a bunch of tiny rooms! Is this studio for your own personal use? If so, I'd make one large control room and a medium size booth that's mostly dead. You can record most stuff in the control room. Play around with my ModeCalc program to find favorable dimensions: Graphical Mode Calculator --Ethan

I've been using the ModeCalc program, but it was my understanding (partly from plugging numbers into that program) that I'd be better off having a non-square room if I could manage that.

It's just a personal studio, and it will probably be converted to a shop or something at some point as I hope I'll build a house eventually, with a studio attached to it. But I may be using this one for four or five years, or I might be using it for one year - I'm not really planning that far ahead, partially because I'm not sure how much work I'm going to have going on next year, much less the year after that.

The more I look at it, the more I think I'm overthinking this and making it harder than it needs to be. I'm just going to put up the building, put bass traps in the corner and along the wall/ceiling edge, add some absorption until it sounds good in there, and hit record. I'm not trying to cut multi-platinum records here, and it can't sound any worse than recording in my 10x10' spare bedroom in my trailer ... pardon me; "manufactured home."

[Ethan Winer]

 

I'd be better off having a non-square room if I could manage that.

 

 

Yes. If you kept the original plan but made the CR the bigger room, that would be better.

 

 

I'm just going to put up the building, put bass traps in the corner and along the wall/ceiling edge, add some absorption until it sounds good in there, and hit record.

 

 

Perfect.

 

--Ethan

[MrJoshua]

Yes. If you kept the original plan but made the CR the bigger room, that would be better. Perfect. --Ethan

Really? It would be better to have a larger control room instead of a larger live room? You know, I guess that makes sense actually. It's not going to make much difference how the room sounds when I'm sticking a mic two inches in front of a guitar cab. Yeah, it makes dialing in the sound easier on the amp, a little, but it's nothing I can't work with. I hadn't thought about it from that perspective. Maybe make a big control room, leave the drums in it too, and then have one small room that's pretty dead that I can use for guitar amps and a vocal booth...

I appreciate all the advice from everyone.

[offramp]

 

there is a lot of "over thinking"

 

 

Occasionally guilty, as charged. In this case, however, I was inclined towards the smaller room because of climate control issues; the big room he described doesn't sound very temp/humidity friendly, and regardless of how nice it would be to work in a big room like that for mixing, the climate factors heavily in comfort.